Parakeets in yard provide a colorful Christmas surprise

11:56 PM,
Jan. 1, 2013

Parakeets visit the Southeast yard of Chris King, who saw the birds on Christmas.

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If "The Twelve Days of Christmas" were rewritten for Chris King of Southeast, his true love might have replaced a partridge in a pear tree with a parakeet at the bird feeder.

King, a video producer who lives on Tonetta Lake Road, awoke Christmas morning to find several monk parakeets flitting around his backyard, from shrubbery to sunflower feeder and back.

The green-hued birds - he spotted up to nine in his yard - are native to South America, but in recent decades have flourished in parts of the area. They are descended from either escapees out of a broken crate at John F. Kennedy International ...